Kubernetes Platforms on STACKIT, IONOS, and Open Telekom Cloud: What Actually Runs There

STACKIT Kubernetes Engine, IONOS Managed Kubernetes, and Open Telekom Cloud CCE provide conformant managed Kubernetes control planes in EU data centers, making them attractive to organizations prioritizing EU jurisdiction, GDPR-related transfer concerns, and certifications such as BSI C5 and ISO 27001. Kubernetes workloads and vendor-neutral tools including Helm, Argo CD, Flux, Kyverno, OPA Gatekeeper, Prometheus, Grafana, KServe, and vLLM generally operate consistently across all three, while differences arise in GPU availability, managed-service breadth, Terraform and Crossplane coverage, storage and load-balancer configuration, and control-plane pricing. STACKIT is positioned as strongest for sovereign GPU options and a broad managed-database catalog, IONOS emphasizes simpler pricing and a free control plane, and Open Telekom Cloud offers a comparatively deep service stack and Telekom-backed footprint. The discussion argues that organizations must still assemble or adopt a developer platform for CI/CD, secrets, RBAC, preview environments, upgrades, cost controls, and policy enforcement, with options ranging from DIY CNCF tooling to Rancher, OpenShift, and bring-your-own-cluster platforms such as Qovery. EU-hosted infrastructure can reduce third-country transfer exposure, but complete data sovereignty depends on auditing the full stack, including CI runners, observability services, SaaS integrations, and AI APIs; migrations should therefore focus on replacing cloud-specific dependencies, validating storage and data recovery, and establishing quotas and non-production shutdown policies.

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